{"id":48135,"date":"2019-09-23T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=48135"},"modified":"2020-05-11T23:26:49","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T03:26:49","slug":"this-week-i-played","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=48135","title":{"rendered":"This Week I Played… (September 2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m congested, and I didn’t want to host a Diecast where it sounded like I was recording from the bottom of a swamp. So rather than leave you with a big ol’ blank space on Monday, I thought I’d do a few rapid-fire topics that have been gnawing on me.<\/p>\n

Basically, this is the stuff that would have been in the Diecast if I’d been fit to record.<\/p>\n

Strange Email<\/h3>\n

I got an email from PlayStation. It went as follows:<\/p>\n

Happy birthday! You can now upgrade your account.<\/p>\n

You are now old enough to upgrade your account and enjoy all the features available on PlayStation Network.<\/p>\n

Upgrade Your Account Now<\/a><\/p>\n

By upgrading your account, you’ll no longer be subject to parental controls and you’ll have your own wallet to make purchases.<\/p>\n

Your online ID, friends, and trophies will remain on your account.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have no idea<\/strong> why they sent me this. I obviously didn’t tell PlayStation I was a minor. I usually give the corporations the wrong birthday because that sort of thing is none of their damn business, but I always make myself older, not younger.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The email doesn’t actually list the account name. Could this message actually be for one of my kids? I don’t think so. Nobody in the family has a birthday in early September. My oldest two have been adults for years, and my youngest hits 18 in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

It’s weird, and the fact that it doesn’t address me by name makes it all the more confusing. If there’s an orphaned PlayStation account out there someplace, I’d like to know about it so I can close it properly.<\/p>\n

Or maybe this was sent in error. Whatever. If anyone else has experience with junior PS accounts I’d love to know if you’ve had messages similar to this one.<\/p>\n

I Finished Borderlands 3<\/h3>\n

90% of my late-game screenshots are massive spoilers, so here's a random screenshot of an incredible Southern Gothic mansion from the first half of the game.<\/div>
90% of my late-game screenshots are massive spoilers, so here's a random screenshot of an incredible Southern Gothic mansion from the first half of the game.<\/div><\/p>\n

I got my character up to the level cap, and… I’m done. For now, anyway. Normally I’d begin a new playthrough with another character, but this game is plagued by many, many minor problems and I’m going to wait until some of them get fixedI ran into the bug where I got negative guardian tokens. Supposedly this is a correction for a bug that awarded too many, but it still sucks. Also, no matter how many I earn, the number never goes up. I’m stuck at -21. Since that’s the only thing to earn once you hit the level cap, it sort of makes it pointless to keep playing.<\/span>. Also, I’m not really having a good time with the game. There’s that, too.<\/p>\n

There are dozens of interface bugs and annoyances. This is particularly true on the PC, where it feels like the mouse-based interface was never given proper testing. I realize that acute consolitis<\/a> is a staple of this series, but that doesn’t make it okay.<\/p>\n

The story is a soup of retcons, fanservice, and random gimmick ass-pulls. It drags on for far too long. It’s not terrible, but it’s not nearly charming enough to justify having long unskippable cutscenes.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of mapsSkywell-27 and Jakobs Manor are notable examples.<\/span> that are brutally long, completely linear, and don’t have a midway fast-travel point or vending machine to give you a chance to recover \/ refill. I thought the dam was a huge slog<\/a> in Borderlands 2<\/em>, but Borderlands 3<\/em> has many areas that are much larger, and still don’t allow the player to take a break and resupply. It’s brutal.<\/p>\n

I stand by what I said last Monday<\/a>: The loot in this game just isn’t interesting. The game showers you in exotic and legendary-tier weapons that don’t seem to be significantly stronger than the common loot. I rarely felt like I had an honestly good weapon. I have a video on this planned for next week, so we can wait until then to dig deeper on this topic.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, here’s an aside that got cut from the video for time:<\/p>\n

Because these games are fundamentally built on randomness, you have to study them for a long time to really get a feel for what’s going on. I’m not an expert on this topic and I don’t know the game deeply enough to diagnose the root problem with loot in Borderlands 3<\/em>. However, if pressed I’d guess that\u00a0 weapon attributes are a major contributor to the ongoing sense that weapon rarity doesn’t mean anything anymore.<\/p>\n

When the game generates a weapon, it chooses from a list of random attributes. Some of these are obvious like “more critical hit damage” or “adds fire damage”. The higher a weapon tier, the more attributes it gets. My guess is that the game has a huge list of worthless and even harmful attributes that it treats like a bonus.<\/p>\n

THE CRIPLLING DRAWBACK OF THIS WEAPON HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 35%. YOU'RE WELCOME.<\/div>
THE CRIPLLING DRAWBACK OF THIS WEAPON HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 35%. YOU'RE WELCOME.<\/div><\/p>\n

One example: Maliwan brand weapons have a “charge up” time. You have to hold the trigger for a second or two before bullets start coming out. Given the frantic speed of combat in this game, that’s a massive handicap. Additionally, Maliwan guns are often further hampered by slow projectile speed that flings the energy bolts at the speed of a gentle underhand toss. It’s really hard to hit distant or fast-moving foes with something like that. And no, the guns don’t seem to have other bonuses to offset this. The game doesn’t take either of these two things into account when calculating the value of an item.<\/p>\n

But then you’ll get a legendary version of one of these monstrosities, and it’ll have a bonus like “35% less charge-up time”. The game acts like this is a huge positive, but all it really means is that this crippling defect is 35% less severe. It’s still a trash-tier weapon and not fit for use at any level, but the game gives it a high value score anyway because of that “bonus”. It’s like a football teamEither kind.<\/span> where one of your players is legally blind. But! He’s got glasses that help him recover 35% of his eyesight. So he’s rated as one of the best players on the team because nobody else has this massive eyesight bonus.<\/p>\n

In the end, you wind up with low-tier guns handily outperforming\u00a0 top-tier guns, because the top-tier versions have a bunch of worthless bonuses that inflate the value of the item in the eyes of the game.\u00a0I’ve actually come to feel a sense of disappointment when I see an orange item pop out, because after all these hours I’ve come to associate that audio\/visual cue with disappointment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That’s crazy.<\/p>\n

Pizza Game!<\/h3>\n